18 April 2010

Lamb of God Live!

No, you clearly don't get the magnitude of how this event has affected me. Why do I say that because it's been a week and I have yet to fully register and digest that I was watching Lamb of God live! Not just live, but my bandmates and I managed to power our way to the middle of the first row. So what? Check out how close I was to Randy and the rest of the performers...

Do you get what I mean now? Not only did I secure pretty much the best damn position of the night, the band played every freaking song we all wanted. We managed to get a partially torn run-down from the event and after double-checking, they literally played every single song I was hoping for and more. Heck, they even played ruin! Ruin!

That was pretty much what I was watching live in front of me!After the show, my bandmates and I were so psyched and inspired we literally walked for 20 minutes without a clue where we were heading but just talking about how freaking satisfied we were. The price of flying to Taiwan just to watch Lamb of God was so worth it!Ever since then, I have been completely re-inspired drum-wise and also about my band. We had deep talks about what we wanted to do as a band and it's great to see everyone kind of got a wake up call to really make this band, this thing we call Eve of Sin, happen. I'm not just talking about gigs in HK and around the city, I'm talking touring and going places. If Lamb of God can do it, there's no reason we can't.

Speaking of being inspired, the great Butch Bradley has been performing the last 3 days in Hong Kong and I watched 2 of his shows as well. Last night's show, I got to sit in the front because there were 2 empty seats that were supposed to be taken but for some reason, the people moved to another seat so I got to fill up the seat! It was the first time for me to enjoy a professional comic from that seat. As a fellow comic, we usually don't sit that close nor interact with the performer, but woah, talk about a whole different situation sitting up there. It has a certain fear and excitement associated with it. Kind of like walking home on your birthday not knowing what to expect, a surprise, or just a cake, or what?

But the last 10 days have honestly been a really, really hectic one for me. I have to say it's been quite tough on me as well because I've had to stay in tip top focus throughout. I remember Monday being all re-energized after my Taiwan trip, but here we are a week later, I can feel the exhaustion, partly also because I've been struggling to try to maintain everything I want, work, drumming, comedy writing, working out, etc. and it really is tiring. Poof! I wrote down a break down of my day and it turns out that if I wanted to achieve everything I wanted, I'd only have 6 hours left for my actual freelance work. This is not including the usual loss of time in general work, sometimes needing to take an extra 20 minutes of rest, etc.! Yikes! Heck, today I was supposed to write comedy from 2:45 - 3:45pm and it's 3:45pm and here I am blogging instead. Why? Well, at 2:45pm, I was still mentally exhausted and it felt like I had so many other things to think about, I couldn't be relaxed and write comedy. On top of that, I was supposed to go to the gym later on but now I don't think I will because my right ankle is a bit sore from all the walking and standing yesterday. Heh.

It's tough forcing myself to not do something when I have so many other things I want to do and I can't do them yet, just makes me feel like I'm going against my principle of getting things done.. heh.

On a brighter note, I upgraded my drumming practice pad to the lovely Roland RMP-5 which forces me to be even cleaner with my drum strokes because it has a meter that checks how close your strokes were to the beat and I've realized my left hand is a tad off when I go above 260bpm hitting eighth notes :(. Darn. At least this is a good benchmark and as long as I keep at it I should see improvements in the upcoming weeks :)

My comedy writing has been slacking because I'm finding it so hard to get to a point I'm relaxed enough to write stupidly at times, there are too many things I need to tend to that writing creatively is getting tough. Especially in my own room because wherever I look, something needs to be done. I'm still in the process of figuring out a way to perhaps have a fixed outing where I go and sit with my laptop and write for an hour. There's a park down my house and perhaps I could do that, but I'll have to give it a shot and see. At least that way I have no distractions other than myself to blame for getting nothing done :P

Darn, I feel like I was 2 years ago, when I was struggling to maintain my freelance work because I didn't have a proper system to keep track of everything going on and now I've got that, which makes me better realize what is going on and further stress me out about how I should be dealing with that instead. Ahh ignorance is bliss.

Speaking of ignorance, Adobe CS5 has come out and boy am I psyched! It's the perfect opportunity for me to re-visit from the ground up, everything I missed out in my favorite digital media applications. I'm still in the process of organizing a study schedule for them and will probably slip in 30 mins a day before I go to bed just so that I don't interrupt the rest of my day and feel there's yet another thing to do....

Anyway, I got 10 more days to figure out a good system and get myself back in my good ol' routine (at least I'm tired of getting you're slacking off emails from rootein.com...) Have fun! Lamb of God LIVE! OMFG!